


just couldn’t say it out loud

by memitims



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 17:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3143474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memitims/pseuds/memitims
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five times bucky looks at steve</p>
            </blockquote>





	just couldn’t say it out loud

Steve first meets Bucky when he’s ten years old. He’s out in the schoolyard, trying his best in a fight against a kid who’s three years older and about fifty pounds heavier than Steve, a kid that wouldn’t stop mouthing off ugly things about the girl Steve sits next to in class. He’s losing – pretty badly, but not as bad as the last one, so he must be getting better – when Bucky stomps up and gets between them, decking the kid in the face. He grabs Steve’s arm around the wrist and pulls him out of the schoolyard at a run, stopping when they reach the street. Steve stops to catch his breath, placing a hand over his chest to calm his aching lungs.

“Teacher was coming,” Bucky says, waving his hands in explanation. “Didn’t want you to get in trouble.” He says it so earnestly, like there’s nothing weird about saving a kid you barely know, like he didn’t do it to be heroic or for the thanks, but because he genuinely cared about helping Steve out.

Steve thanks him anyways. Bucky looks away, almost shyly, and mumbles a quick  _you’re welcome_.

“You’re Bucky, right?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. Everybody in the fifth grade knows who Bucky is – he’s probably the only one that gets into more fights than Steve, but he actually wins them. He’s a loner, like Steve, but the girls love him. Looking at his face up close, Steve can tell why.

Bucky nods.

“Steve.” He holds out his hand for Bucky to shake, because his mother has all but drilled perfect manners into his head, and Bucky takes his hand, shaking it firmly. It’s warm. He stops the handshake abruptly in the middle though, when he notices the mess of scrapes running across Steve’s arm.

“Let’s go get ya cleaned up,” Bucky says, nodding towards Steve’s injuries.

“Don’t worry,” Steve replies. “I’ll be fine. Just need a place to sit down.”

Bucky looks him over skeptically, worrying his lip with his teeth, before nodding. “Fine. Doesn’t look too bad. I think you got more hits on that old bully, anyways.”

Steve smiles down at his shoes.

They find a bench a few blocks from school, a new wooden one with shiny armrests, and they plop down onto it. Bucky sits close enough so their thighs touch. Steve’s lungs still hurt and his arms are sore, but it feels good to sit down, especially when Bucky swings an arm around his shoulders and squeezes gently.

“Buddy,” he says, “you gotta stop picking fights with kids twice your size. ‘M not always gonna be there to save you.” He looks at Steve, clearly teasing, his eyes glinting with a touch of cockiness.

Steve scowls at him. “Don’t need you to save me.”

Bucky holds up his hands in surrender. “Fair enough. Just be safe, okay? You don’t need to take on the world by yourself, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks, maybe, that he and Bucky could take on the world together.

(They do, and Bucky is always around to save Steve when he needs it.)

\---

They’re sixteen and drunk, passing back and forth a bottle of some liquor that Bucky had convinced an older kid to buy for them. They snuck onto the roof of Steve’s building, and it’s an almost unbearably hot summer night, the kind where the air feels thicker and the stars closer.

“Can’t believe you got the prettiest girl in school to kiss you,” Steve says, a bit wistfully. He wishes someone wanted to kiss him, but he’s too skinny, too pale, too awkward.

“It’s easy,” Bucky smirks. “Just gotta turn on the charm.”

Steve’s pretty sure Bucky’s all charm, with his twinkling blue eyes and winning smile, but he’s not quite drunk enough to say that out loud.

“Wish I had some charm.”

“Oh, Steve,” Bucky says, his speech slurring slightly now, and Steve can tell that he’s picking his words carefully. “They’ll come along. A girl, I mean. She won’t care about any of that dumb stuff.” He pokes Steve in the chest, near his heart. “She’ll like you for who you are. She’ll like you for the way you carry people’s bags and help them across the street and all that good samaritan bullshit. She’ll see that you’re feisty and brave and tough and won’t see just your outside.” Bucky was rambling now, staring down at his boots, and a blush spread across Steve’s cheeks at his best friend’s words.

“Christ, Bucky,” Steve murmurs softly. “You really mean all that?”

Bucky looks over at him, his eyes glassy like they always get when he’s drunk, his face more open than Steve’s ever seen it. Something tightens in Steve’s chest, and it’s not because of his asthma. They stare at each other for a beat too long, and that’s all the answer Steve needs, really.

“Such a fucking sap,” Steve teases, because it’s easier than talking about this thing between them, the way his heart beats too fast when Bucky smiles at him, the way their hidden legs tangle under the table when they eat at the diner down the street, the way Bucky looks at him like he’s the sun fallen out of the sky.

(Steve doesn’t want to be anyone’s sun. He just wants to hold Bucky’s hand.)

\---

Bucky’s the only one who looks at Steve the same way after the serum.

Bucky doesn't look at him and see Captain America or a soldier or a tool. He looks at him and sees Steve, his best friend, the boy he saved from schoolyard bullies all those years ago, the kid he grew up with, side-by-side, the man he would do anything for, would go to the ends of the earth with. Steve can’t tell Bucky how much that means to him.

They chase HYDRA throughout Europe. Bucky looks exhausted, his eyes duller, his smile missing the blinding brightness it once had. Steve just wants this to be over. He wants to go back to Brooklyn, where they can be innocent kids again, where he can forget about Bucky strapped to that table, and he can forget the smell of gunpowder and put down his shield. But that’s just some stupidly optimistic dream he keeps having, because deep down, he knows that they’ll probably never make it back, they’ll never be those people again.

Bucky might look at him the same way, but neither of them are actually the person they see underneath.   
That night, they lie in their shared tent, shoulders touching through the fabric of their sleeping bags. Steve can’t sleep, his thoughts racing, all of them centered around the man lying next to him. That was the story of his life, probably –  _Couldn’t stop thinking about Bucky Barnes._

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly, breaking the silence. He knows Bucky isn’t asleep, can hear it in his uneven breathing.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, his voice muffled in his pillow.

Steve turns to face him and Bucky does the same, their faces moving towards each other as if magnetized. Their noses almost brush in the darkness, and Steve swallows. He can’t do anything stupid, like kiss Bucky. It would ruin everything. So he opens his mouth instead.

“We should open a restaurant when we get out of here,” he says. “A real homey place, with homemade pies and pancakes in the morning, and mashed potatoes and spaghetti and all that good stuff my mom used to cook when we had money.”

Bucky laughs, a small broken laugh, his breath spilling out over Steve’s lips. Steve knows what he’s thinking.  _We’re never gonna get out of here._

“Call it something cheesy,” Steve continues. He’s not sure who he’s distracting, Bucky or himself, but he keeps talking, watching the emotions flicker across Bucky’s face. When he’s done, Bucky smiles – small and warm, the kind of smile Steve hasn’t seen in ages – and Steve’s heart almost breaks.

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Sounds like a plan,” and Steve still desperately wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t. He rolls back over and counts the beats of his racing heart, each one for Bucky.

“Night,” Steve whispers, and lets himself fall asleep.

(A month later, Bucky falls and Steve feels like his life is over.  _You were never going to be able to hold his hand_ , the universe says, as if it’s laughing at him. A small part of Steve is glad he never kissed Bucky in that tent, glad he never knew what Bucky’s lips tasted like.  _One less thing to miss_ , he tells himself, fighting off tears that sting the corners of his eyes. )

\---

Seventy years in the future, and a man with Bucky’s face crushes his hand against Steve’s jaw as the helicarrier plunges down towards earth. The bones in Steve’s face crack under Bucky’s cold, metal punches, but something in his chest breaks too.

“Bucky,” he chokes out, his eyes slipping closed. Steve’s body is riddled with bullet holes and he’s been frozen for decades and he’s been hit by cars and debris, but nothing compares to how painful it is to watch the ghost of his best friend look at him with blank, dead eyes and not register his own name. “Buck, look at me.”  
Bucky looks at him. Hope bubbles up in Steve’s chest because for a split second, he recognizes the man looking down at him, his blue eyes a mix of soft and horrified.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, and then they fall.

(Steve couldn’t save Bucky when he fell from the train onto the icy slopes below, but Bucky saves him when he falls into the Potomac river. Steve thinks it might be tragically poetic.)

\---

Three months after dragging Steve out of the river, Bucky shows up on the doorstep of his apartment. Steve had tried to find him, of course, but it had been nothing but dead ends.  _You won’t be able to find him if he doesn’t want to be found,_  Natasha had told him.  _Let him come to you. He’ll get there._

Steve had half-listened to her advice, but he couldn’t help the way he looked for Bucky everywhere in went, scanning the crowds, his heart skipping a beat every time his eyes caught sight of dark brown hair.

And now, Bucky’s standing in front of him, his long hair messily pulled back and his metal arm glinting in the mid-morning sunlight. Steve opens his front door all the way and Bucky looks at him and the wounds scattered across Steve’s heart start to mend, because that’s not the blank look of an imposter inhabiting the body of his best friend, that’s all Bucky, his Bucky.

Steve holds out his hand like he did when he was ten years old, a lifetime ago. “Steve,” he says.

Bucky doesn’t take his hand this time. Instead, he smiles – small and a little lopsided, but a smile nonetheless – and strides forward, taking Steve’s head between his hands and kisses him. Steve lets out a muffled noise of surprise, but his lips go almost immediately soft under Bucky’s mouth. He wraps his hands around Bucky’s neck and holds on.

They break apart after a few moments, but Bucky keeps his hands tangled in Steve’s hair. Steve doesn’t mind. “Should've done that a long time ago,” Bucky mutters against Steve’s lips. Steve nods in agreement. There’s probably a lot they should have done a long time ago, but Steve’s done with living in the past. “Sorry,” Bucky says, even quieter. “For everything.”

Steve glares at him. “Don’t fucking apologize, Buck. Don’t you dare apologize.”

Bucky quickly pulls away and looks down at his feet, his eyes sad. Steve reaches out and tips his chin forward, grabbing Bucky’s metal fingers with his other hand.

“C’mon, buddy,” he says, pulling Bucky into his apartment. “Let’s talk.”

(Bucky follows Steve. He always did.)


End file.
